This week: The Lincs Offshore Wind Farm receives its last wind energy turbine from Siemens

The 75th turbine was lifted into place on Sunday 31st March and marks a major milestone in the development of the 270MW project, which will be capable of producing enough energy to meet the annual power needs of more than 200,000 households – equivalent to two thirds of the homes in Lincolnshire.

Lincs Project Director Patrick Harnett said: “We’re delighted to have reached this important milestone, which comes as a result of a lot of hard work on all sides.

“Moving forward we’ll be focusing on the commissioning of each of the Siemens 3.6MW turbines, getting the wind farm up to full strength and, most importantly, delivering much needed power for the UK’s homes and businesses.”

The wind farm is located 8 kilometres (5 miles) off the coast of Skegness and is being built out of Esbjerg in Denmark. Commissioning will be managed in the UK from Grimsby and Sutton Bridge near King’s Lynn.

Once complete, Lincs will be managed from Centrica’s new operations and maintenance base in Grimsby, which was opened last year as a major new hub for the business. The base includes the Siemens service team and will function as a shared resource for the Lincs, Lynn and Inner Dowsing wind farms. Siemens also provides grid connections to the Lincs wind farm.

Construction of the project started in 2010 with full commissioning expected later this year.

Lincs is a joint venture between leading UK energy company Centrica Energy, DONG Energy and Siemens Project Ventures.

Centrica is a top 30 FTSE 100 integrated energy company and a leading developer of offshore wind farms in the UK. For more information, go to www.centricaenergy.com

Lincs is the third of Centrica’s wind farms to be built in the Greater Wash. The existing Lynn and Inner Dowsing wind farms have a combined capacity of 194MW, providing enough power to meet the annual demands of more than 130,000 homes.

DONG Energy is one of the leading energy groups in Northern Europe. Our business is based on procuring, producing, distributing and trading in energy and related products in Northern Europe. DONG Energy has 7,000 employees and is headquartered in Denmark. The Group generated DKK 67 billion (EUR 9.0 billion) in revenue in 2012. For further information, go to www.dongenergy.co

The Financial Services unit of Siemens (SFS) is an international provider of business-to-business financial solutions. SFS helps facilitate investments, providing commercial finance, project and structured finance with specific asset expertise in the energy, healthcare, industry, and infrastructure & cities markets. Employing more than 2,900 employees worldwide, SFS supports Siemens as well as other companies with their capital needs and acts as an expert manager of financial risks within the Siemens company. By leveraging our financing expertise and our industrial know-how we create value for our customers and help them strengthen their competitiveness. Beyond that, financing is key in creating trust for technological solutions – and acts as a key enabler when it comes to the market launch. As of September 30, 2012, the total assets amounted to €17.4 billion.

Siemens scope of service on the Lincs Wind Farm includes the supply, installation and commissioning of 75 SWT 3.6MW wind turbine generators, the design and installation of the grid connections, and the provision of operations and maintenance services from the Siemens Service Renewables team, which includes 35 service technicians. For more information, visit: www.siemens.com/finance.